Boeing's 787: In the Air at Last

The Dreamliner makes its first flight after two years of delays.

Today the Boeing
787 “Dreamliner”, said to be 20 percent more efficient,
60 percent quieter, and significantly cheaper to maintain, passed a huge
milestone as it finally took
off and landed.

Watching the
televised takeoff of the 787–after two years of delays brought on by
manufacturing errors and structural problems–brought back some memories. Six
years ago I visited Boeing’s rain-drenched tarmacs and vast hangars in Everett,
WA, to report a feature for Technology Review on the then-new project to build what was dubbed the
“7E7” commercial jet.

The idea was
to gain an edge on Airbus by offering a midsized super-fuel-efficient jet, with
better jet engines, and reduced weight enabled by far wider use of composite
structural materials as well as fewer bulky pneumatic control systems.

In 2003 Boeing engineers and executives spoke
excitedly about how the 7E7 would take collaborative Internet-enabled design
and widely distributed manufacturing processes to new heights. Designers
around the world would collaborate on the same master file over the Internet.
Then subcontractors around the country and world would get a copy of those
files, whip together big chunks of the structure, and ship those chunks back to
Everett. Boeing would simply snap together the parts. No problem. “We call
it our Lego airplane,” Frank Statkus, Boeing’s vice president of
technology and processes, joked to me at the time.

The improved computer design process was meant to eliminate
problems. Previously, Statkus explained, a supplier would sometimes “have
to digitize our picture to tell his machine how to build it. This translation
sometimes caused errors.”

Well, of course, Boeing didn’t squeeze out all the errors.
Production was hampered by ill-fitting parts and structural
problems that led to five
delays, extending the commercial delivery date two years (it’s now scheduled
for late 2010). In 2008, for example, the company found that parts of the center
wing box–the massive structure at the center of the plane, extending to
two-thirds of the wingspan–required stiffening with new brackets, which in
turn forced the re-routing of some wiring. The component–15 meters long and 5
meters wide–had been designed and built by Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries and Fuji
Heavy Industries, in Japan. And, earlier this year, Boeing also had to
resolve another structural issue.

Back in 2003, Mark Jenks, Boeing’s director of technology
integration told me that the plane was “the future. It really is. It’s a
huge deal for us. If we get it wrong, it’s the end. And everyone here knows
that.”

After today’s historic flight, and with orders for 840 planes already taken, the hard part may finally be done.